Monday, August 13, 2012

Two from Ten

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." --Mark Twain
Good writers bring together words that create pictures, stimulate thought, and stir emotions. "Powerful words harmonize heart and mind as if a symphony," said Toba Beta.
How do you learn to use the right words--words that harmonize? First, collect. circle, and later clip words in context from yellowed paperbacks, magazines and newspapers. Then use them. But not as you did in school by order of teachers of tedium: "Use the word in a sentence that indicates you understand the word's definition." There is a better way:Learn Words through Play

Collect words in context. No time just now? Then borrow from my collection. Today's ten examples, listed alphabetically, all begin with the letter T--one letter to expedite checking definitions if you need to.

Scan the word preceding each selection. By itself a word is like an elm tree in winter, its branches dark and tattered against a grey sky. In context, words take on color like the leafed-out tree, its green variegated by sunlight.

Notice how the word is used in each selection. Did the context increase your interest in the word?

Mark the selections you like, and note why they deserve a happy face.

Choose two or more words, and use each in a sentence or paragraph. Call on your muse and have fun. Think of each as a splash of color in a painting. The activity's purpose is to practice writing well, and not to exemplify a word's definition.

For feedback, take your selections to your critique group.

Tacit

"Somehow the workers always seem
to be able to find ingenious ways of evading or even sabotaging the plan.
Sometimes, in fact, these evasions take place with the tacit connivance of the
foremen, who are no fonder of the restrictive controls on them than the workers
are of theirs.” -Unknown

"The pistol was used in self
defense, but when the prosecutor does not pursue the issue of carrying a
concealed weapon, the DA's office is giving tacit approval for vigilante
behavior." -Unknown

Taciturn

"Their imprint endures in neat
coastal villages, carefully cultivated fields, ... and taciturn men of the sea
like Carl Darenberg, Jr., who talks in slow tempo of the fortunes of
sportsfishing." -Unknown

“I picture McCrae, the whimsical
but principled free spirit, and Call, McCrae’s taciturn and granite-hard best
friend and partner, riding through these dusty streets before leaving Texas on
a grand adventure….” –Suzy Banks

Taxonomist

“They are known to be
gregarious, exceptionally intelligent primates, and the only apes whose society
is said to be matriarchal … and orgiastic: they have sexual interactions
several times a day and with a variety of partners. While chimpanzees and
gorillas often settle disputes by fierce, sometimes deadly fighting, bonobos
commonly make peace by engaging in feverish orgies in which males have
intercourse with females and other males, and females with other females. No
other great apes—a group that includes eastern gorillas, western gorillas,
Bornean orangutans, Sumatran orangutans, chimps and, according to modern
taxonomists, human beings—indulge themselves with such abandon." –Paul Raffaele,
Smithsonian11/06

Teem

“They point to an Islamicized
Europe, where mosques teem and churches go empty; where the Islamist position
on almost every critical issue is either adopted or tolerated”. - Dr. Richard
Benkin

Telescope

“Then Kristin's talk paused, and
Elsa looked up to see her holding a dress she had just taken from the
telescope. The dress was cheap, too-much-laundered, and the instant defensive words
jumped to Elsa's lips…” -Wallace. Stegner The Big Rock Candy Mountain

“Mrs. Switzer was trying … to
get all of Daisy’s things into the battered telescope that lay on the bed.”
Ruth Suckow

“She tried hastily to put on the
cover of the bulging telescope and to fasten the straps. One of them broke.”
Ruth Suckow

Termagant

“For almost sixteen years, Sandy
dominated my marriage like a termagant mother-in-law, and now that she is no
longer there to edge between us as we walk, Gerdi and I hardly know what to do
with our new-found freedom.” - Dayton O. Hyde, 1968

“Washington’s mother ... was a
termagant and a Tory, though his wife was a jewel of affability and charm who
endured the rigors of winter encampments with her husband through the war and
sustained him through periods of ravaging pessimism.” –Fawn M. Brodie

Thrum

“As he ate, a seagull landed on
the thrum cap and eyed him quizzically. ” D. Preston & L. Child

“Then, as if a herdsman had
cracked a whip, wildebeest, zebra, gazelle and antelope sweep over the plains,
and for a few weeks the Serengeti thrums with hoofs pounding against hard
earth. These are sounds our hominid ancestors would have heard. … a scene they
may have watched from a hillside overlooking the plains.” – Virginia Morell,
Smithsonian ‘06

The thrumming pulses in her brain had
begun to leak into one another like spies whispering secrets but she was still
on her feet and … her enemies had not triumphed.” - Joyce Carol Oates

These were the days of extra fuel
carried in a can, of rear-door tonneaus, acetylene lamps, and rims which were
not demountable. The filling station, where it existed in its rudimentary form,
was still the mere adjunct of a garage whose weightier business lay in repairs
to motors.” -Charles Merz

Trenchant

“While admirable biographical
and critical studies appear from time to time, and here and there a whimsical
or trenchant discursive essay like those of Miss Repplier or Dr. Crothers, no
one would claim that we approach France or even England in the field of
criticism, literary history, memoirs, the bookish essay, and biography.” –Bliss
Perry

“On Jargon … gives
trenchant and amusing examples of that disregard for the primary meaning of
words to which all writers are liable, whether they are freshmen in college of
practicing journalists.” –McCullough & Burgum

“Though The Devils is
quite possibly the most violent of Dostoevsky's novels, it also brims with
buffoonery and trenchant social satire.” - Vance Adair

Truncheon

“He had a selection of weapons
laid out on the old pine table: a wicked-looking knife that he claimed was SS
equipment, a Walther P38 automatic pistol of the kind Flick had seen German
officers carrying, a French policeman's truncheon, a length of black-and-yellow
electrical cord that he called a garrote, and a beer bottle with the neck
snapped off.” -Ken Follett

“Police used truncheons and
plastic shields to disperse protesters along the narrow streets…” -Unknown

Keep what you write in a notebook or binder. If you like to write, you'll enjoy comparing your early efforts to later work.